Kyl Back to Senate
McCain's term will be finished by his old colleague John Kyl, another 'grand bargain on immigration' guy. Even in 2007, when that article was written, his voters were incensed about the issue. I don't get the sense that the Republican electorate has grown more accepting in the ensuing decade.
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9 comments:
I am glad, however, to see that he rejected the 'dynasty' thing of appointing Cindy McCain (or Meghan).
True. And Kyl, in his defense, is a guy who knows the Senate and won't have a learning curve. He'll be able to do what a Senator is supposed to do for constituents right away, and represent his state's interests from the start.
Still, I keep seeing the Republican establishment wedding itself as hard as it can to the free-flow-of-cheap-labor model. It's a lesson they are trying their hardest not to learn.
Do you favor a minimum wage being mandated by Government?
Eric Hines
Tex and I used to discuss that. The answer is, 'not really, but before you can get rid of it, you also need to get rid of the welfare state so that corporations can't push their costs off onto taxpayers.' Local governments do this too; our sheriff's department, when I was a kid, used to pay deputies just enough that they still qualified for the full array of food stamps and other Federal benefits. In effect, they managed to tax the whole of the United States to pay for their law enforcement officers.
I do favor high wages for American workers. I want the ordinary American to have a job where he or she can put in a good day's work, and in return watch their lives get better. I think we should do what we can to ensure that American workers grow secure and prosperous by their work. Importing cheap labor to undercut them, legally or illegally, works against that. I'd like to see the guy who works hard every day get ahead, especially if he's my countryman and fellow citizen.
How do you reconcile not really favoring a minimum wage mandated by government with apparently favoring government setting minimum wage through manipulating the supply of labor?
Eric Hines
I don't think I see the analogy as valid. Markets exist within contexts; change the context, and the market will come to different valuations. The context is primary, and the market's working secondary to the facts of the context. The market sets the price of labor according to the laws of supply and demand; that the government doesn't open its borders and allow just anyone to come in isn't 'market manipulation,' no more than a famine wiping out a large part of the labor supply would be.
Still, if you do see the analogy as valid, it condemns the Chamber of Commerce's preference too. If it's market manipulation by the government to set the price of labor when immigration is restricted, then it is also market manipulation to flood the market with cheap labor. If you want to see this as a case of undesirable government interference with the market, that's true of either policy that the government might adopt. It's just then a question of how the government will manipulate the market, not whether it ought to do so.
The real reason to control immigration is cultural, in any case. Economic effects are of lesser importance compared to cultivating the American way, and making sure that newcomers are fully assimilated. There are also cultural benefits from ensuring that diversity is kept within healthy bounds, so that we can obtain its benefits without the tensions and social fragmentation that come when a society becomes too balkanized. I want to see Americans well paid and prosperous, too, but most of all I want to see America and its values defended. That requires space and time: a space in which those values can flourish, and time to assimilate those you do bring in.
I'm no fan of the CoC's preference here, either.
It's market manipulation/labor supply manipulation by government if government's purpose in limiting/expanding immigration is to manage wage levels.
Cultural preservation and labor supply manipulation are two different things, even though labor supply is impacted by who we let in under the guise of cultural preservation. I'm all in favor of letting in only those with a marketable skill and a demonstrated willingness to assimilate into our culture--after all, it's the advantages our culture creates that make us a place immigrants want to come to (generally; there are exceptions) and that make us a place we who are already here, and so have primacy in the matter, want to keep. But given those two criteria--and the latter's satisfaction, especially, is a good reason for citizenship being grantable only after a number of years--I'm in favor of easy entry.
There's also a tension between higher wages to the laborer and higher costs to the consumer. As an example of both, I'm lean toward favoring the consumer. Economically, too, if consumers can't afford the product, laborers don't have jobs. That's a tension that should be worked out only in the market, without government manipulation of either.
Eric Hines
Funny, I make what I think is the opposite argument: you can't get away with a minimum wage and a welfare state at the same time. The steady supply of cheap labor is a fact of life as long as there is any cross-border trade at all. Tariffs can only briefly obscure the issue.
I also believe you can have open borders only so long as you give up both a minimum wage and a welfare state.
PS, This idea of corporations having a natural ownership of the "cost" of workers' living expenses is one that apparently can never die. I notice that the proposed "BEZOS" bill takes that same approach. First, you assume that it's the corporation, not the worker or his friends & family, who has the problem of how to pay for room and board. Then you complain that the corporation is failing, and that we tenderhearted taxpayers are unfairly being forced to pony up because we care more than the corporation does about the worker's personal wellbeing. That is, we care, but not really, because we purely hate writing the check out of our own pockets.
Unfortunately, the easiest answer for the corporation is not to hire the worker. As they say, if you want more robots, this is how you get more robots. An alternative, of course, is for the business to fail--perhaps a satisfying temporary result, but no ticket to prosperity, for either the disappointed workers or the taxpayers who feel they now have to feed the non-workers instead.
I've never been able to understand that end game. Doesn't it simply mean reverting to the level of poverty the whole world experienced before we figured out the increased (though unequal) prosperity that flows from free markets?
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